Multilayer distributed intelligent control of an autonomous car

•We show the benefits of using a development framework in an ITS application.•Simulated experiments test the behavior activation in the decision-making process.•Real experiments show the actual working of the intelligent vehicle application.•The development framework is used to implement a two car convoy application.•The use of a development framework permits to reduce the development time.

This paper shows how the development of an intelligent vehicle application can benefit from using standard mobile robotics elements in general, and a development framework in particular. This framework, ThinkingCap-II, has been successfully used in other robotics applications. It consists of a series of modules and services that have been developed in Java and allows the distribution of these modules over a network. The framework facilitates reusing components and concepts from other developments, which permits increasing the performance of the intelligent vehicle development. This fact is especially useful for small research groups. A two car convoy application has been implemented using this architecture and the development of an autonomous vehicle. Both the ThinkingCap-II and the autonomous vehicle architectures are described in detail. Finally some experiments are presented. Simulated experiments are used to validate the convoy model, testing the activation of the different behaviors in the decision-making process. Real experiments show the actual working of the developed intelligent vehicle application.